Appendix 1 – A Very Brief History of the Idaho National Laboratory and Its Predecessors[1] 

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For nearly 70 years, the Idaho National Laboratory and its predecessors have been a major if not the largest employer in Idaho Falls.  The “Lab” has brought people to this city that would not otherwise have come, and they have contributed in numerous ways to the life and character of the city.  The following brief overview of the history of the INL is provided as background for considering the spiritual influence that the Lab has had on the city and how God has used it for His purposes.

 

In 1942-3, the Naval Ordinance Station was constructed near Pocatello to support U.S. Naval operations in the Pacific by relining worn guns and manufacturing and assembling new ones. To test the refurbished guns and also test different projectile designs, the Navy established a 271 square mile firing range in the desert west of Idaho Falls[2] called the Naval Proving Ground (NPG).  1650 gun barrels, with diameters up to 16 inches, were tested on the NPG. In 1945, at the height of testing, 15,000 projectiles were ordered for testing the guns.  Thus the history of what became the INL started as a military weapons test site, in support of the nation’s role in World War II.

 

The US Army also used the NPG for research into detonation of explosives. Many tests were designed to improve understanding of how explosives could be safely stored and transported.  One test in 1945 involved 250,000 pounds of TNT, and was, at the time, claimed to be the largest deliberate detonation ever set.  The Pocatello Ordinance Station discontinued operations in 1949 and so did testing at the NPG, but it was resumed from 1968 to 1970 in support of the Vietnam War. The theme of energy and power, although in different forms than the guns and explosives tested at the NPG, and more specifically of the safe use of power, form a major thread running through the history of the INL.

 

Following World War II, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was established to foster and control the peacetime development of nuclear science and technology. In the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, Congress declared that nuclear energy should be employed not only in the Nation’s defense but also to promote world peace, improve the public welfare, and strengthen free competition in private enterprise.  The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 also required the AEC to conduct research in nuclear energy “through its own facilities.”

 

After a nationwide search of possible sites, on February 18, 1949 the AEC selected a site west of Idaho Falls, encompassing all of the NPG and more, for its reactor test site.[3]  Reasons the AEC chose the Idaho site were its isolation from highly populated areas for safety and security reasons, availability of subsurface water and other utilities, a climate and geology that minimized environmental contamination and it’s nearness to communities where personnel could live.  Thus the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), locally referred to as “The Site” was created, with Idaho Falls designated as the headquarters city.  While development of nuclear energy for both peaceful (primarily commercial electric power) and national defense (“Cold War”) purposes is the dominant theme of the NRTS in its early years, a subtheme of political influence and power – national, state and local, sometimes in conflict – is a constant undercurrent in the history of the INL.

 

The original mission of the NRTS was to enable research, development and testing of nuclear reactors, and construction began in the early 1950’s for four initial projects.  These included three nuclear reactors – the Experimental Breeder Reactor, the Materials Testing Reactor, and the Submarine Thermal Reactor, and a fuel recovery facility, the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (ICPP or “Chem Plant”).  The AEC originally planned to construct and test only five reactors at the NRTS over a ten-year period.  However, as potential uses and the anticipated need for nuclear energy grew, and additional concepts for nuclear reactors were conceived, additional reactors were built and tested.  Eventually fifty-two mostly first-of-a-kind reactors were constructed on the NRTS, and all but two operated.  A list of these reactors along with their dates of operation is given on the webpage http://www4vip.inl.gov/research/52-reactors/.[4] 

 

On December 20, 1951 the Experimental Breeder Reactor (EPR-1) became the first nuclear reactor to generate electricity, providing power first to four 200-watt light bulbs, and the following day sufficient electricity for the building in which it was located.

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Figure A1-1. First four light bulbs lit by nuclear power. Photo licensed under public domain.

 

While today this hardly seems notable, at the time the demonstration of using nuclear energy, which up to that point had only been used destructively in atomic bombs, for a “peaceful” purpose was viewed with great significance and promise for the future.  However, generation of electricity was a secondary purpose of the EPR; its primary purpose was to validate nuclear physics theory that predicted that a reactor could generate more nuclear fuel than it consumed.  In 1955, timed to coincide with the first International Conference on Atomic Energy held in Geneva Switzerland, a different reactor, the Boiling Water Reactor Experiment (BORAX-III) powered the city of Arco, the first time a city had been powered solely by nuclear power.[5]

 

From its beginning until about 1970, activities at the NRTS focused on four areas:

 

1.    Nuclear reactor testing, experimentation and development

2.    Commercial reactor safety, both human and environmental

3.    Cold war military applications

4.    Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, from reactors onsite and offsite, to recover reusable and valuable nuclear materials.

 

On May 31, 1953, the Submarine Thermal Reactor started its initial power run, giving birth to America’s nuclear Navy.  This reactor proved that atomic propulsion of ships was feasible and became the prototype for the nation’s first atomic powered submarine, the USS Nautilus.  Later, other prototype reactors for Navy submarines were tested at the Naval Reactors Facility (NRF).  Besides proving the reactor technology that would be used in the Navy’s submarines, NRF served as the training facility for Navy personnel who would become crews on those submarines; from 1953 to May, 1995, approximately 39,000 Navy personnel received training at NRF.

 

One of the other military applications developed at the NRTS was an Air Force project which had the stated objective of producing a nuclear powered aircraft that would be able to stay aloft for 30 days without refueling.  Announced in 1962 with the promise of bringing 1000 jobs to Idaho, facilities were constructed and tests performed at Test Area North (TAN). The first reactor went critical[6] on November 4, 1955.  Later, additional reactors were built and tested.  Program managers promised a nuclear powered airplane would be ready by 1963, but in early 1961, President John F. Kennedy cancelled the program.

The Army had three projects the NRTS at in the early years.  The Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One (SL-1) was designed to demonstrate a reactor that could be transported and installed in the Arctic and Antarctic to power radar stations.  The Army’s other two experiments involved perfecting a “mobile” reactor that could fit in a truck and be used at field stations.  The SL-1 went critical on August 11, 1958.  On January 4, 1961, an accident occurred that killed the three operators of the reactor.[7]  The accident investigation identified intentional removal of a control rod as the cause of the accident; much speculation has been published on what caused the operator to remove the control rod beyond its safe limit.[8]

 

By 1971 most of the NRTS’s 52 nuclear reactors had been built, served their experimental purposes and many had been dismantled.  The results of these research activities had national and worldwide impact because the data generated provided the basis for the design and operation of nuclear power plants worldwide.  Yet even in the late 1960’s various people, from Idaho’s Congressmen to Idaho’s governor to NRTS employees, realized the site needed new projects and missions if it was to survive.  The Idaho legislature created the Idaho Nuclear Energy Commission to promote nuclear energy projects at the NRTS and elsewhere in the state.  One of their efforts was to try to keep the MTR from being shut down in 1970.  They convinced the Idaho Fish and Game to use the reactor to test for the extent of mercury poisoning of wildlife around the state by irradiating pheasant, fish, grass, beef, sheep and pork samples, which they did.  But finding no other clients to use the reactor, it was shut down.

 

One area of nuclear research that has remained strong throughout the history of the INL is reactor safety.  Several reactors and projects were designed to test accident scenarios, including the Loss of Fluid Test Facility (LOFT), the Power Burst Facility (PBF) and Semiscale, which was a model reactor that had no nuclear fuel, but simulated the heat of a nuclear core with electrical means.  Just after the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979, Semiscale was used to simulate the accident and answer urgent questions about whether a hydrogen bubble forming in the TMI reactor would explode and rupture the containment shell.  Semiscale results removed fears of an explosion at TMI.  Also, examination of partially melted fuel after a PBF test which mimicked the TMI accident accurately showed what happened to the TMI fuel.  Tests like these brought international interest in INEL reactor safety analysis, and led to widespread use in the nuclear industry of nuclear reactor safety codes that had been developed and validated at the INEL.

 

Though the fast-paced, cutting-edge nuclear reactor testing performed at the NRTS declined after the early 1970’s, reactor testing did continue.  Some projects were started and later cancelled, such as the Integral Fast Reactor (1985-1994), aimed at demonstrating a fail-safe reactor that would generate much less waste and avoid nuclear fuel proliferation concerns of other types of reactors, and the New Production Reactor (1989-1992), which was one option being considered for resupplying tritium for aging nuclear weapons. Other reactor tests, most notably using the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), constructed in 1967 and still in use today, have continued to generate important data needed to evaluating reactor fuels, designs and materials, and to generate medical isotopes.

 

In part because of global warming concerns and interest in non-fossil fuel energy technologies, the 2005 Energy Policy Act, by designating the INL as the nation’s lead nuclear energy laboratory,[9] gave new life and funding to nuclear projects at the INL.

 

Closely related to nuclear reactor testing, the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (“Chem Plant”) processed spent nuclear fuel to recover reusable materials from the beginning of the NRTS until 1992.  An early mission of the Chem Plant was to recover uranium-235 from MTR fuel, which was “spent” in only 17 days.  By some estimates, the 32,432 kg of U-235 recovered by the Chem Plant was worth more than 1 billion dollars.[10]  Over its lifetime the Chem Plant also reprocessed fuel from nearly 100 research and power reactors,[11] and is credited with many “firsts” in fuel reprocessing.[12] Construction of an improved replacement for the Chem Plant, the Fuel Processing Restoration (FPR) Project, began in 1988 but was cancelled in 1992.

 

In 1974 the AEC was reorganized into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the more broadly focused Energy Research and Development Administration, which morphed into the Department of Energy in 1977.   Also in 1974, reflecting the changing mission of these agencies, the name of the NRTS was changed to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL). 

 

One INEL project to develop non-nuclear power was the Raft River geothermal project in southern Idaho.  Initiated in 1972, a pilot plant started up in October 1981, demonstrating technical feasibility and putting electricity into the regional grid.  However, in large part because the economics of the plant could not compete with Pacific Northwest hydropower, the plant was shut down a few months after it started up and ultimately sold to a private company who moved it to Nevada.

 

Other non-nuclear energy programs included industrial energy conservation, alcohol fuel production, energy from biomass, electric vehicle batteries, lithium ion batteries and solar energy research.  The INL became the nation’s lead laboratory for small innovative hydropower systems, and as a result of this program, Idaho Falls installed low-head bulb turbines in the Snake River to increase municipal electricity generation. 

 

The change from the Nuclear Reactor Test Station to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory reflected the broadening of the mission of the site, and employment and funding kept increasing. Driven by the nation’s need for energy, and to develop ways to produce that energy safely, the INEL continued to grow in the 70’s, 80’s and early 1990’s. But the real cause of growth was due to waste and environmental issues that came more into focus in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  

 

Since work began at the NRTS, wastes were generated that, because of their radioactivity, had to be disposed onsite.  Over the years, DOE found it expedient to ship radioactive wastes from Rocky Flats and other DOE facilities to the INL. The Navy also sent their spent nuclear fuel to Idaho, and wastes and/or spent fuel from a few commercial power plants, including Three Mile Island and Fort St. Vrain, came to Idaho for examination, treatment or temporary disposal.  Thus a second major mission, waste management and environmental stewardship, developed to where, in 1997, the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory became the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

 

As early as 1954, plutonium-contaminated waste from Rocky Flats Fuel Fabrication Facility near Golden, Colorado was shipped to the NRTS to be disposed in a burial ground (later part of the Radioactive Waste Management Complex, or RWMC).  A fire in the Rocky Flats facility in 1969 resulted in much more waste sent to the RWMC.  Approximately 62,000 cubic meters of transuranic[13] waste was buried at the RWMC between 1954 and 1970, and an additional 65,000 cubic meters received since 1970 was stored on above-ground asphalt pads.[14]  Prompted by concerns of contamination to the aquifer underlying the RWMC, numerous studies and retrieval tests were performed, starting in 1971.  Retrieval and shipment of buried waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico started in 2005 and is expected to continue to 2028.  Work to prepare and ship the 65,000 cubic meters of above ground waste at the RWMC to WIPP also began in 2005, and as of mid-2015, only 2,500 cubic meters of this waste remains. 

 

The environmental mission of the INEL started long before the name change in 1997.  In 1963, a dairy farm was started on twenty-seven acres about seven miles north of the Chem Plant to determine the impact of release of radioactive iodine (I-131). Over 14 years, 29 experiments were conducted, with a few including employees who voluntarily drank milk from cows that ate grass that absorbed I-131 from intentional releases.  One result of these experiments was the reduction in the allowable discharge of radioiodine by commercial power plants by a factor of one thousand.

 

Some INEL environmental projects have dealt with treatment of wastes generated at the site.  Hundreds of thousands of gallons of aqueous, acidic waste resulting from fuel recovery activities at the Chem Plant, were converted to “calcine,” a granular solid, in the Waste Calcining Facility from 1963 to 1980 and then in the New Waste Calcining Facility from 1983 to 2000. Calcination of this reprocessing waste liquid has avoided the problems that storage of liquid waste have caused at Hanford and Savannah River sites. 

 

Concerns by Idaho officials over the INEL becoming a “waste dump” as well as national environment laws led to much discussion and many evaluations regarding numerous INEL wastes and contaminated facilities no longer in use. Idaho governors in particular, while welcoming the research activities performed by the INEL, were increasingly concerned in the 1980’s about wastes being shipped to and stored at the INEL.  The Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFA/CO) between the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Idaho, signed in 1991, and the Settlement Agreement between the Department of Energy, the Navy and the State of Idaho, signed in 1995, provided impetus for extensive engineering evaluations, public involvement and joint decisions of how to deal with the INEL wastes.  In the Settlement Agreement, DOE agreed to various deadlines, from 2003 to 2035, for treatment and/or shipment of different wastes.  By 2003, both because of progress made with some wastes and lack of progress for others, there was much talk of downsizing or even closing the site.  By then it was clear that the environmental mission would eventually come to an end.  The Idaho Cleanup Project was conceived in 2005 as a seven-year program to accelerate the cleanup.  In formal recognition of this second major change in its mission, the “INEEL” became the “INL” on February 1, 2005.

 

The first laboratory facilities located in Idaho Falls, initially called the Idaho Laboratory Facility and later renamed the INEL Research Center (IRC), was dedicated in 1984.  While intended to support nuclear reactor safety programs and environmental programs, it provided capability to do research in other areas as well, and a broad range of research projects were sought and obtained.  One of the first was a Bureau of Mines program to develop biological processing of ore.   

 

A more recent Idaho Falls research facility is the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES), created so that INL and universities, both in and outside Idaho, could cooperatively conduct research, hold technical conferences and conduct classroom learning.  The CAES campus was dedicated in 2009.

 

In 2005, contract changes for the INL reflected the mission change, completing the “legacy” cleanup on the one hand and pursuing nuclear energy and other areas of research on the other hand.  Battelle Energy Alliance was awarded the contract for the research side, which became known as the “Lab,” as opposed to the Cleanup Project, which was awarded to CH2M-WG Idaho.[15]  Battelle Energy Alliance included Battelle, URS Corporation, The Babcock and Wilcox Company, Electric Power Research Institute, the National University Consortium[16] and the Idaho University Consortium.[17]  The mission of the Lab included research in (1) nuclear and other forms of energy, (2) homeland security and (3) science and the environment, which covers about anything else.

 

One of the major projects under the Homeland Security mission is the Critical Infrastructure Test Range Complex, which researches, develops and tests technologies, systems and policies to protect the nation’s infrastructure.  The Test Range has a full scale electric power grid with a 61-mile transmission loop, sever independent substations and a control room for conduction comprehensive interoperability, vulnerability and risk assessments.

 

In the early 1980s the Army funded the conversion of a facility at the INL into a production plant for depleted uranium armor for M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams Tanks.  The plant began production in 1986 and has continued production through 2015.

 

A NASA program was moved to the INL in 2004 that produces radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) for space flights, such as the New Horizons mission to Pluto launched in 2006 and missions to Mars.

 

Formed in 1949, the INL was the 9th Department of Energy Laboratory; the first lab had been established in 1910 and the most recent in 1984. As of 2015, there are a total of 17 DOE National Laboratories.  According to the DOE website, the INL as of 2010 had the 6th highest employment of these 17 labs, although the employment shown for the INL from this source does not include INL cleanup contractors; including these would bring the INL up to 3rd highest.  The INL is the only national laboratory administered by DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology.  While missions have come and gone at the INL and it's predecesors, projects related to power and safety, most notable nuclear power and its safe generation, have been major  elements.

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Update and add more current projects based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory https://www.inl.gov/news/ and other sources; also add more photos.

 

[1] Primary references for this Appendix include:

1. Proving the Principle – A History of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, 1949-1999, Susan M. Stacy, 2000.

2. The Idaho National Environmental and Engineering Laboratory – A Historical Context and Assessment, Narrative and Inventory, The Arrowrock Group, INEEL/EXT-97-01021 (Revision 1), November 17, 2003.

3. Transformed – A Recent History of the Idaho National Laboratory, 2000-2010, Mark Swenson, Mary Beth Reed, Tracey Fedor, May 25, 2012.

4. Coming of Age: Idaho Falls and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory 1949-1990, Ben J. Plastino, 1998.

5. Charles’ personal experience working for INL contractors from May, 1988 to August, 2010.

[2] Common descriptions of the location of the NPG, with dimensions approximately 9 wide by 36 miles long, are “40 miles northwest of Blackfoot and 23 miles east of Arco.”  The guns were fired from near the southern end (now the Central Facilities Area of the INL) toward the northeast.

[3] The 177,000-acre NPG was expanded to an eventual 569,000 acres (890 square miles) for the NRTS.

[4] A more detailed list with a description of each reactor is given in Appendix B of Proving the Principle, A History of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, 1949-1999, Susan M Stacy, 2000.

[5] Delegates from the Soviet Union at the International Conference tried to assert that the test didn’t happen, but news media reporters who had gone to Arco and Arco residents were pleased to report that it did.

[6] A nuclear reactor reaches criticality when the rate of production of neutrons equals the rate of loss of neutrons, resulting in a controlled, self-sustaining reaction producing a constant power.

[7] This accident was the world’s first at a nuclear reactor facility which resulted in fatalities, and the first fatalities from incidents of any kind at the NRTS.  Experiments related to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos resulted in two fatalities in 1945-46.

[8] Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America’s First Nuclear Accident, by William McKeown, 2003 is one of many sources, reports and books which discuss possible scenarios. Most, like the article http://www.argusobserver.com/news/nuclear-accident-still-mystery-to-rescue-worker/article_272b80ac-57d0-5dfc-9fe7-440e6e27b6e3.html conclude that the operator’s intentions will never be known.

[9] The INL is the only DOE laboratory (of 17 total) managed by the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, although nuclear energy research is performed at several other National Laboratories.

[10] One source that states that the U-235 recovered by the Chem Plant was worth more than $1 billion is http://energy.gov/em/idaho-national-laboratory (accessed 11/16/15).

[11] B. Pace, J. Braun, H. Gilbert, Idaho National Laboratory Fuel Reprocessing Complex Historic American Engineering Record Report – ID-3-H, INL/EXT-06-11969, December, 2006.

[12] See pages 58-59 of B. Pace, J. Braun, H. Gilbert, Idaho National Laboratory Fuel Reprocessing Complex Historic American Engineering Record Report – ID-3-H, INL/EXT-06-11969, December, 2006 for a list of 20 firsts achieved by the Chem Plant.

[13] “Transuranic” waste is waste that contains alpha-emitting radionuclides, most commonly plutonium, americium and neptunium, with half-lives greater than 20 years and atomic numbers greater than uranium.

[14] M. A. McCormack, "Management of Alpha-Contaminated Wastes at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory," Conf. 800611-1, June, 1980.

[15] While the activities of Argonne West, which until 2005 had been managed by the DOE office in Chicago rather than DOE Idaho, were integrated into the Lab’s contract in 2005, the Naval Reactors Facility was not.  NRF was managed by Westinghouse Electric Corporation from 1950-1999, Bechtel-Bettis, Inc from 1999-2008 and after 2008 by Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corporation.  Also one part of the site cleanup, the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, was awarded to Bechtel BWXT Idaho in 2005.

[16] Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, North Carolina State University, University of New Mexico and Oregon State University.

[17] University of Idaho, Idaho State University and Boise State University.

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Appendix 2.  Idaho Falls Churches, Past and Present

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(This appendix was originally written in 2012 and updated in September 2017.)

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As of September, 2017, we know of 58 churches meeting in Idaho Falls.[1]  This number includes a few that meet in homes, and several that use meeting rooms of businesses or other churches.  The early history of the city saw a relatively rapid rate of growth of the number of churches. Around the year 1900, the growth rate of churches slowed and was relatively constant for the next 50 years.  At that point the rate increased for about a decade, and then hit another plateau that lasted until the mid 1970’s.  Starting in 1976, the number of churches increased rapidly until the year 2001, when it declined for two years, remained nearly constant for a decade, and then since 2013 has again risen steeply.  Figure 1 below compares the growth in the number of churches to the population growth.

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Figure 1. Comparison of the number of Idaho Falls churches and population.

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Including churches that at some point stopped meeting, the total number of churches that have been in Idaho Falls is either 95 or 112,[2] depending on whether or not name changes are counted as different churches.  The first church which constructed a building in the city was First Baptist, and they met in that or later facilities for 126 years until 2009, when the church voted to disband.  The oldest church in Idaho Falls that still meets are the Methodists, known in their early years in Eagle Rock as the Methodist Episcopal Church and now as Trinity United Methodist Church.  The Methodists were also the first church to plant a daughter church in Idaho Falls, St. Paul's UMC.[3]  As in other cities, in Idaho Falls there have been church mergers, church splits, churches joining, leaving or changing denominations, and numerous times when a church changed its name. 

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Figure 2 shows the same data as Figure 1 but in a different way, plotted as the ratio of the Idaho Falls population to the number of churches.  This ratio started at about 600 people per church in 1885, decreased to 160 in 1900, saw a ten-fold increase over the next 60 years, plateaued close to 1600 until 1980, and since then has generally decreased.

 

 

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Figure 2 Ratio of Idaho Falls Population and number of Christian Churches.

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Table 1 shows the number of churches which have started and the number which have closed by decade.[4] Only a few churches started each decade until the 1980's, and church closures were rare for more than 100 years.  Since 1980, the average number of new churches has been between 1 and 2 per year.  

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Table 1. Churches started and closed in Idaho Falls by decade.

 

Of the 24 churches which began in the 1990's, only 9 are still meeting as of late 2017.  Table 2 contains data on the lifetime of churches in Idaho Falls, both those that are closed and those that no longer meet.

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Table 2 Lifespan and age of churches in Idaho Falls, as of September, 2017.

 

Table 2 shows that a slight majority of churches in Idaho Falls (25) are first generation, that is, less than 20 years old.  A significant number, 14, have transitioned or are currently transitioning to second generation, and 19 are third, fourth or fifth generation.  

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About every ten years, the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) publishes a breakdown of religious affiliation in the United States by county.  Figure 3 shows these data for Bonneville County for the period 1951-2010. 

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Figure 3. Religious trends in Bonneville County.

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The ASARB data is broken down by religion and denomination.  The "other religion" fraction includes Baha'i, Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, and Unitarians. Neither Muslims nor Jehovah Witnesses are shown in the data for Bonneville County, although Idaho Falls has had a Jehovah Witness congregation for many years..  What I labeled "Trinitarian" on Figure 3 includes Catholics, mainline Protestant denominations and Evangelical Protestant denominations.  Being the only published source of local religious data, the ASARB compilations have value.  The 2010 data, for example, show the size of 47 "religious bodies", including 41 Christian denominations, a number which compares well with the list of churches in town known to be in Idaho Falls in 2010.  However some of the ASARB data is questionable.  While showing one Calvary Chapel congregation in Bonneville County in 2010, the data shows zero adherents[5] for this church.  Looking at the 2010 data, some numbers look high, such as 1,821 Southern Baptists and 1,007 adherents of Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (First Lutheran Church in Idaho Falls). The spike in the nonreligious fraction in 1980, and corresponding drop in LDS and Trinitarian fractions, is questionable. 

 

Also the drop in Trinitarian fraction in 2010 deserves further explanation.  Comparing data from 2000 to 2010, the largest loss in adherents came from the Catholic Church, of 2,846 people or 30% of the number of adherents counted in the year 2000.  Other major losses came from the Presbyterian Church, a loss of 315 adherents or 32%, the Salvation Army, 134 adherents or 55%, and the Episcopal Church, 108 adherents or 24%.  The denominations showing the largest gains in Bonneville County in 2010 include Assemblies of God, Foursquare, Nazarene, Southern Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist and nondenominational churches.  The largest gain, 1,282, is for nondenominational churches, a category not included in previous years. However the combined gains do not counterbalance the losses, resulting in a net loss for the decade of 2,121.  

 

The question that these and other data can provide clues to is, "Is Jesus' church in Idaho Falls growing or declining, relative to the population growth?"

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Of course, Jesus' "true" church in the city is a subset of the combined number of people who associate themselves with any of the churches in Idaho Falls, and at any given time likely includes a few that aren't associated with any organized church in town.  But the assumption here is that the two - the size of the true church and the combined size of "visible" churches, correlate.

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Another source of data that can help answer this questions is the “Idaho Falls Church Demographic Report,” dated 5-1-1991,[6] which shows both membership and average attendance for 24 churches.  The total membership of these churches in 1991 was 10,299 people and average attendance 5,875.  Five churches had greater attendance than membership while all the rest show the reverse.  From other sources (such as phone books, city directories and personal memories) it's known that 13 other churches were meeting in Idaho Falls in 1991, but evidently this Demographic Report ignored these smaller churches.  I estimate that combined, these other 13 churches would have added a little more than 300 people to the total attendance number.  

 

Comparing the attendance in this 1991 report to attendance of the same churches 20 years later, in 2011:

            3 no longer meet

            10 have had negative growth rates that vary between -0.2 and -5.8% per year

            7 have had growth rates between 0.1 and 1.2% per year     

            The remaining 4 had growth rates of 3.2-4.1% per year.

 

Of the other 13 churches that met in Idaho Falls in 1991, 7 no longer meet, 3 have had negative growth rates, and 3 positive growth rates.

 

The average population growth rate during this same period was 1.3% per year. Thus only 7 of 39 churches exceeded the growth rate of the population, and 26 of the 39 declined in attendance.  While this data does indeed suggest that church attendance in Idaho Falls is declining, a different conclusion can be drawn from the fact that during this period 1991-2011, 33 churches were started in Idaho Falls.  While only 16 of these were still meeting 20 years later, some of the others had growth rates of up to 20% per year.

 

Using any and all sources available, including church records, newspaper articles, and for recent years, personal observation, I have estimated attendance by year for all churches in Idaho Falls.[7]  Summing these numbers by years gives the plot shown on Figure 4.      

 

      

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Figure 4. Estimated church attendance in Idaho Falls by year, compared to population.

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According to these data, Idaho Falls church attendance tracks population closely, and for the whole history of the city has been close to 20% of the population.

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[1]  This number does not include LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses or other non-Trinitarian churches.  This is actually our best estimate and may be off by 2 or 3 either way, as there is a fair flux of churches starting and discontinuing from year to year, and we don't always hear about every one immediately.

[2] as of September, 2017

[3] But it was 63 years before they formed the Japanese Methodist Church, and then another 12 before they planted St. Paul's Methodist Church.  Hope Lutheran Church, which began in 1957, is probably the first church planted by another church (St. John Lutheran) that is still meeting.

[4] There is some ambiguity in what can be considered a “start.”  People or groups that met for only a few weeks or months were generally not included in the count.  Also, churches that changed their names were not counted as new churches but just the continuation of the previous one unless there were other major changes, such as a shift from one denomination to a significantly different one.

[5] "Adherents" are defined as all members, their children and others who regularly attend services.  Thus there is a potential overestimation bias compared to regular attendees, as some of the older and larger churches have much larger membership roles than attendance.

[6]  The author of this report, which I believe was unpublished, is unknown.  Charles obtained it in 1992 from a pastor and understood then it had been developed by a group of Idaho Falls pastors that were meeting at the time.  However, given that certain churches were not included in the study whose pastors were part of that group suggests it may instead have been put together instead by a civic or governmental organization or consultant.

[7]. A few churches in town maintain annual attendance records for some churches while many do not.  Thus there is certainly uncertainty and error in our church attendance estimates, and whenever I find additional sources of data, I make corrections. 

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